A photo in the Washington Post on Thursday showing reporters outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner Tuesday night seemed to confirm what some suspected about the coverage of the partial federal government shutdown that ended Thursday: Journalists of color were scarce when it came to reporting the developments from Congress, the center of the action.

That was before the recession hit, competition from the Internet cut back the number of Washington-based reporters and diversity became an even lesser priority at news organizations.

Distance from the action might help to explain why so few journalists of color were part of the television and radio talk-show discussions on the shutdown.

Still, some were close to the center of the storm, and coincidentally, many of them have ties to the journalist of color associations.

Catalina Camia, On Politics community leader at USA Today and a former president of Unity and of the Asian American Journalists Association, filed several stories for her newspaper. So did her colleague, Aamer Madhani, particularly about the impact on national parks. "Aamer covers the White House and wrote shutdown-related stories on President Obama and the administration," Camia told Journal-isms.

William Douglas of the McClatchy Washington Bureau messaged, "I did indeed cover the shutdown non-stop for about a month. I'm now resting and getting re-acquainted with my family." Douglas, a black journalist, was part of the McClatchy bureau's team coverage.

Native journalist Rob Capriccioso told Journal-isms, "I did several pieces for Indian Country Today Media Network based from D.C. on how the shutdown impacted Native Americans from a policy and political perspective." Capriccioso listed six stories, both breaking news and enterprise, to illustrate his point.

"Jim Avila (Senior National Correspondent for ABC News) was part of our team in DC covering the shutdown," an ABC News spokeswoman said. CBS News, NBC News, Fox News Channel and CNN did not respond when asked about the participation of journalists of color, though CNN's Joe Johns, a longtime Capitol Hill correspondent, went to Boehner's home district to see how his constituents were reacting to the shutdown.

Seung-Min Kim of Politico, who is also president of the Washington chapter of AAJA, said, "from my team alone (the congressional reporting team at Politico), we have me, Manu Raju and Ginger Gibson (she is half Hispanic)." In addition, Scott Wong another AAJA member, works from Capitol Hill and writes Politico's morning congressional newsletter, "The Huddle."

Darlene Superville of the Associated Press, a White House correspondent who is active in the Washington Association of Black Journalists, covered the shutdown from the president's vantage point. So did Kristen Welker, an NBC News White House correspondent and a black journalist, andDavid Nakamura of the Washington Post, a member of the paper's White House team who is Asian American.

Joe Davidson of the Washington Post, a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, followed the impact on federal employees for his "Federal Diary" column.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. It does not include photographers, for example, and as Seung-Min Kim said, "With so many journalists on the Hill during this time (and varying numbers on a day-to-day basis), it would be really hard to tell" how many journalists of color were present.

Additionally, not all of the action was on Capitol Hill. Others covered the effects of the shutdown in communities across the country, in the immediate Washington area or handled the story as columnists, talk-show hosts, commentators — even as editors in the newsroom.

A piece by Farah Ahmad of the Center for American Progress on Day 10 of the shutdown indicated that while journalists of color were underrepresented in the reporting on the shutdown, their communities might have been overrepresented in feeling its effects.

"Most government jobs have good pay and benefits, which can be a good foundation for middle-class incomes; therefore, any loss of government jobs can have a disproportionate effect on the middle class. This is particularly true for African Americans and other people of color, who, after the civil rights gains of the 1960s, saw that public service employment opened up economic opportunities for good, well-paid jobs that provide some measure of protection against discrimination. The competitive pay scales of government employment have lifted generations of black people into the middle class.

"While a lot of press attention has been focused on what services the furlough has cut off, there has not been as much attention on who is being affected — particularly in communities of color.

"Who are these furloughed employees? Data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show there may be up to 150,000 African American, 70,000 Hispanic, and 47,000 Asian American federal employees who have been furloughed. . . . African Americans may be disproportionately affected by the furlough, as government jobs have been more available to them than jobs in the private sector. African Americans hold about 18 percent . . . of federal civilian jobs, while making up around 13 percent of the U.S. population. . . ."

"Prince George's County [Md.] Executive Rushern L. Baker III has been asked in the past about the Redskins name and has typically avoided stating a direct opinion. But after a meeting of top regional leaders at the John A. Wilson Building in the District [of Columbia], Baker (D) explicitly said he would support a name change. . . ."

DeBonis also reported, "On Tuesday, Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, the New York-based organization that combats anti-Semitism, said 'teams like the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians have a responsibility to be sensitive to the legitimate hurt that offensive names, mascots and logos cause.'

"Columnist Charles Krauthammer has taken on fellow [conservative] pundits, including Fox News' Bill O’Reilly, over the name. . . .

"Among Redskins fans polled, a total of 46 percent of respondents said a name change would not lessen their support for the team. Another 23 percent said that a name change would actually make them even more of a Washington fan.

"The poll of 500 adults in the Washington D.C. area was conducted by SurveyUSA and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent. . . ."

"Instead of taking a job at another media outlet, Hinojosa decided to form her own nonprofit production company. Now, her go-it-alone gamble is paying off: As public media increasingly seeks to attract diverse audiences, including the country's 53-million-and-growing Latino population, Hinojosa's New York–based Futuro Media Group is positioned to help meet the demand.

"After two decades as a half-hour public radio series, Hinojosa's Latino USA, has expanded to an hour, a length that's more compatible with stations' schedules. Produced independently by Futuro since 2010, the weekly NPR show's carriage is growing, as is its social media footprint, with some 86,000 followers on the streaming SoundCloud platform. Meanwhile, PBS and World Channel are finalizing an eight-episode run of Futuro's America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, which explores how changing demographics are reshaping communities across the country. The series, which began with a 2012 election special, is expected to debut early next year. . . ."

" 'Did that happen? Hell, no,' adds Itliong, who found Filipinos working the fields for less than a dime an hour. Itliong knew a lot that happened that was left out of the history books. It's one of the reasons we have a month officially dedicated to Filipino American History," Guillermo continued on his blog for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"Today, on Oct. 16, Filipino American History Month gets the month all to itself. Half over, the month begins in earnest.

"Since Sept. 15, October had also been concurrently National Hispanic Heritage Month, which notoriously double dips into two months and broadens its 30 days not unlike Imperial Spain. It does, however, honor the days that countries conquered by Spain in Latin America and Mexico celebrate their independence. But expansion into October means the inclusion of Columbus Day, which takes the spotlight off the Italian's dirty deeds to the indigenous with the name Dia de la Raza. Thanks to Ronald Reagan in 1988, it's all there as Public Law 100-402.

"By contrast, the scope of the Filipino American month solely honors the actions of actual Filipinos in America, and is thus genuine American history. . . .

"They were snatched on their arrival at Brussels airport as they were disembarking from a flight from Nairobi and immediately sent to prison in Bruges under charges of 'piracy, kidnapping, and organized crime' for their alleged participation in the capture of a Belgian ship and of its crew off the Somali coast in 2009.

"How did it happen that these two men literally jumped into the lion's den? Because they were duped in a sting operation. Since the end of the 70-day hostage taking — which had been resolved after a ransom was delivered to the pirates — Belgian authorities had vowed to grab the authors and their sponsors. Convinced that an international warrant would not be acted upon by Somali authorities, the Belgian police decided to go undercover.

"According to Belgian federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle, police agents posing as documentary filmmakers contacted Tiiceey and asked him to put them in touch with Mohamed Abdi Hassan. After months of discussions, the pirate was eventually tricked into traveling to Brussels with a promise that he would be the chief adviser for a documentary film 'reflecting his life of piracy on the high seas.'

"The sting operation was met with applause in Brussels. 'This arrest marks a significant step in the fight against piracy,' said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The ruse, however, immediately raised eyebrows among journalists.

" 'By pretending to be journalists, did the super-heroes of our security services realize that they put in danger all journalists in conflict areas?' wrote Belgian public radio RTBF journalist Thomas Nagant on his Facebook page. 'It is a question of principle: resorting to unconventional stratagems is not undignified as such, but how far can you go? You cross an unacceptable line by pretending to be a journalist, a humanitarian actor, or a diplomat.' "

"The Belgian association of professional journalists (AJP, the French-speaking section) also vividly expressed its concerns. . . ."

"The 70-page report, ' "They Want a Confession': Torture and Ill-Treatment in Ethiopia's Maekelawi Police Station,' documents serious human rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 35 former Maekelawi detainees and their relatives who described how officials had denied their basic needs, tortured, and otherwise mistreated them to extract information and confessions, and refused them access to legal counsel and their relatives. . . ."

The report also said, "Martin Schibbye, a Swedish journalist held in Maekelawi in 2011, described the pressure used to extract confessions: 'For most people in Maekelawi, they keep them until they give up and confess, you can spend three weeks with no interviews, it's just waiting for a confession, it's all built around confession. Police say it will be sorted in court, but nothing will be sorted out in court.' . . ."

"New York City teachers and students from grades 6 to 12 will have a new teaching and learning resource for the classroom: a bilingual social studies curriculum that documents the last 100 years of Latino community history in NYC (1913-2013), as covered through the pages of El Diario/La Prensa, the longest publishing Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary," the newspaper announced Friday. "The project is a partnership between El Diario/La Prensa and the City College of New York's Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, with collaboration from the Gregorio Luperón High School for Mathematics and Science, and El Puente Academy for Peace and Social Justice. It was developed by the Fall 2012 graduate 'Education that is Multicultural' class at CCNY . . ."

In the Gambia, "President Yahya Jammeh's former press and public relations chief has been charged with sedition for passing state secrets to a journalist," the Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression Exchange Clearing House reported Wednesday. "Fatou Camara, who was arrested on Oct. 10 and released after posting bail, also previously worked as a talk show host for the state-run Gambia Radio and Television Services. Her arrest follows a whirlwind of bizarre proclamations from Banjul, the Gambian capital, including accusations that the United States and the United Kingdom were behind plots to undermine the government. Jammeh also pulled his country out of the Commonwealth, an organisation of 53 mostly current and former British colonies. . . ."

Richard Prince's Journal-isms originates from Washington and is published Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It began in print before most of us knew what the Internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a "column." For newcomers: The words in blue (on most computers) are links leading to more information. The Web site BugMeNot.com provides passwords and user names to some registration-only news sites, but use may be illegal in some states. Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity.

Comments

First Obama ain't answering no black reporter's question because the 5% of black that get it just might ask the President about Jobs and Housing. However as 95% of blacks support Obama is there a need for a black reporter to ask a question? If Obama is doing so well that 95% of every black in America to be walking around with some Obamabucks on their EBT card, talking on their Obamaphone plus now got some Obamacare...we must be in tall cotton.

I believe that in this one situation of the state of black America, We would have Dr. King & Tupac agree on this one thing about blacks....You wonder why they call you B!

JugglingFor ACure

The lack of journalists of color, particularly African-American journalists, helps to explain why many issues pertinent to African-American communities are often not given proper coverage on the national level.

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